35 Inspirational Soren Kierkegaard Quotes On Success

Søren Aabye Kierkegaard was a Danish philosopher, theologian, poet, social critic, and religious author who is widely considered to be the first existentialist philosopher. He wrote critical texts on organized religion, Christendom, morality, ethics, psychology, and the philosophy of religion, displaying a fondness for metaphor, irony, and parables. Much of his philosophical work deals with the issues of how one lives as a “single individual”, giving priority to concrete human reality over abstract thinking and highlighting the importance of personal choice and commitment. He was against literary critics who defined idealist intellectuals and philosophers of his time, and thought that Swedenborg, Hegel, Fichte, Schelling, Schlegel, and Hans Christian Andersen were all “understood” far too quickly by “scholars”. Kierkegaard’s theological work focuses on Christian ethics, the institution of the Church, the differences between purely objective proofs of Christianity, the infinite qualitative distinction between man and God, and the individual’s subjective relationship to the God-Man Jesus the Christ, which came through faith. Much of his work deals with Christian love. He was extremely critical of the practice of Christianity as a state religion, primarily that of the Church of Denmark. His psychological work explored the emotions and feelings of individuals when faced with life choices. May these Soren Kierkegaard Quotes On Success inspire you to take action so that you may live your dreams.

1. “The door to happiness opens outward.” Soren Kierkegaard

2. “The most painful state of being is remembering the future, particularly the one you’ll never have.” Soren Kierkegaard

3. “Confidence is the present tense of hope.” Soren Kierkegaard

4. “Do it or don’t do it – you will regret both.” Soren Kierkegaard

5. “It is not where we breathe, but where we Love, that we live.” Soren Kierkegaard

6. “The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly.” Soren Kierkegaard

7. “If I were a physician, and if I were allowed to prescribe just one remedy for all the ills of the modern world, I would prescribe silence. For even if the Word of God were proclaimed in the modern world, how could one hear it with so much noise? Therefore, create silence.” Soren Kierkegaard

8. “It is the duty of the human understanding to understand that there are things which it cannot understand.” Soren Kierkegaard

9. “It is not the path which is the difficulty; rather, it is the difficulty which is the path.” Soren Kierkegaard

10. “Who am I? How did I come into the world? Why was I not consulted?” Soren Kierkegaard

11. “A man prayed, and at first he thought that prayer was talking. But he became more and more quiet until in the end he realized prayer is listening.” Soren Kierkegaard

12. “Above all, do not lose your desire to walk. Everyday, I walk myself into a state of well-being & walk away from every illness. I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it. But by sitting still, & the more one sits still, the closer one comes to feeling ill. Thus if one just keeps on walking, everything will be all right.” Soren Kierkegaard

13. “In a theatre it happened that a fire started off stage. The clown came out to tell the audience. They thought it was a joke and applauded. He told them again, and they became still more hilarious. This is the way, I suppose, that the world will be destroyed-amid the universal hilarity of wits and wags who think it is all a joke.” Soren Kierkegaard

14. “People settle for a level of despair they can tolerate and call it happiness.” Soren Kierkegaard

15. “The greatest danger to Christianity is, I contend, not heresies, not heterodoxies, not atheists, not profane secularism – no, but the kind of orthodoxy which is cordial drivel, mediocrity served up sweet. There is nothing that so insidiously displaces the majestic as cordiality.” Soren Kierkegaard

16. “The more people who believe something, the more apt it is to be wrong. The person who’s right often has to stand alone.” Soren Kierkegaard

17. “Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.” Soren Kierkegaard

18. “Which is more difficult, to awaken one who sleeps or to awaken one who, awake, dreams that he is awake?” Soren Kierkegaard

19. “To be a woman is something so strange, so confusing and so complicated that only a woman could put up with it.” Soren Kierkegaard

20. “People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.” Soren Kierkegaard

21. “Truth always rests with the minority, and the minority is always stronger than the majority, because the minority is generally formed by those who really have an opinion, while the strength of a majority is illusory, formed by the gangs who have no opinion – and who, therefore, in the next instant (when it is evident that the minority is the stronger) assume its opinion, while Truth again reverts to a new minority.” Soren Kierkegaard

22. “Face the facts of being what you are, for that is what changes what you are..” Soren Kierkegaard

23. “Once you label me you negate me.” Soren Kierkegaard

24. “The highest and most beautiful things in life are not to be heard about, nor read about, nor seen but, if one will, are to be lived.” Soren Kierkegaard

25. “And this is the simple truth – that to live is to feel oneself lost. He who accepts it has already begun to find himself, to be on firm ground. Instinctively, as do the shipwrecked, he will look around for something to which to cling, and that tragic, ruthless glance, absolutely sincere, because it is a question of his salvation, will cause him to bring order into the chaos of his life. These are the only genuine ideas; the ideas of the shipwrecked. All the rest is rhetoric, posturing, farce.” Soren Kierkegaard

26. “There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.” Soren Kierkegaard

27. “Where am I? Who am I? How did I come to be here? What is this thing called the world? How did I come into the world? Why was I not consulted? And If I am compelled to take part in it, where is the director? I want to see him.” Soren Kierkegaard

28. “The truth is a trap: you cannot get it without it getting you; you cannot get the truth by capturing it, only by its capturing you.” Soren Kierkegaard

29. “The most common form of despair is not being who you are.” Soren Kierkegaard

30. “The question is not “To be or not to be,” it is what we should be until we are not.” Soren Kierkegaard

31. “It is better to try something and fail than to try nothing and succeed. The result may be the same, but you won’t be. We always grow more through defeats than victories.” Soren Kierkegaard

32. “The unhappy person is never present to themself because they always live in the past or the future.” Soren Kierkegaard

33. “The daily press is the evil principle of the modern world, and time will only serve to disclose this fact with greater and greater clearness. The capacity of the newspaper for degeneration is sophistically without limit, since it can always sink lower and lower in its choice of readers. At last it will stir up all those dregs of humanity which no state or government can control.” Soren Kierkegaard

34. “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” Soren Kierkegaard

35. “Take a chance and you may lose. Take not a chance and you have lost already.” Soren Kierkegaard

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